1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ordered product delivery date management system which predetermines production slots for the number of products producible in each operation day, and which allocates a production slots to an ordered product. More particularly, the present invention relates to an improvement of management of exchanging of production slots so as to enable delivery of an ordered product by a delivery date desired by a customer.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, an automobile production plant produces a wide variety of products on a single production line in order to enhance production efficiency and the like. Respective vehicles to be produced are allocated production slots determined for each operation day according to a production plan or the like. Each vehicle is produced with a plurality of parts such as an engine installed according to specifications, and may also incorporate optional products such as an air conditioner or car audio equipment when completed as a final product. The parts for the engine and the like are almost always commonly used in order to efficiently produce a large variety of vehicles. In other words, the same parts are used to produce different types of vehicles to efficiently produce a wide variety of products with a relatively lower production volume.
However, even if a production slot for a vehicle can be secured as described above, it is meaningless if the parts, such as optional products to be installed in the vehicle, are not provided in time. Such parts are also produced in a production plant in much the same way as the assembled vehicle is produced. For example, a production, sales, supply and demand system disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. Hei 4-145573 secures some objective systems as a final product as well as production slots for articles configuring the objective systems at the same time so to enable to immediately respond a recommended delivery date of the objective systems to a customer.
The automobile production plant generally adopts a custom manufacturing system which starts to produce a vehicle upon receiving an order from a dealer and a planned manufacturing system which produces vehicles in expectation of some orders from the viewpoint of sales strategies and the like independently of the presence or not of an actual order. Briefly, the custom manufacturing system includes procedures wherein a dealer adds information about its name and the like to vehicle information about a vehicle name, body color, options and the like related to an ordering vehicle and sends the information to a production plant. The production plant secures a production slot which the ordered vehicle can be produced according to the order information received from the dealer. A vehicle deliverable date determined in consideration of the operation day of the secured production slot is given to the dealer as a scheduled delivery date. The vehicle is then assembled in the secured production slot according to the vehicle information and delivered to the ordered dealer on the scheduled delivery date.
From the viewpoint of user satisfaction and manufacturer and dealer reliability, custom manufacturing systems face significant issues in order to deliver a vehicle as soon as possible after receiving an order from a customer and to respond to scheduled delivery date immediately. The following procedure is conventionally followed in an attempt to deliver a vehicle to a customer as soon as possible.
First, orders from a dealer to a production plant are roughly divided among ordered vehicles and potential vehicles. An ordered vehicle refers to a vehicle which is ordered upon actually receiving an order after contracting with a customer, while a potential vehicle refers to a vehicle not yet ordered by a customer. A dealer places an order for an ordered vehicle to the production plant with priority information to request production with a priority added to order information for ordered vehicles. Upon receiving the ordering information as ordered information from the dealer, the production plant secures the earliest production slot among free production slots in view of the ordered information if it has priority information. If no production slot is available, a production slot assigned to a potential vehicle having lower priority is transferred to the ordered vehicle and the potential vehicle is reallocated a later free production slot. Thus, the ordered vehicle is produced with priority and can be delivered by the designated delivery date.
As described above, conventionally a free production slot is retrieved, and if a free production slot is not available, a vehicle having higher priority is allocated a production slot assigned to a vehicle having lower priority so as to achieve early delivery. This procedure was made to immediately provide a reliable delivery date taking into consideration part production slots, thereby improving services to the user.
However, even though in the aforesaid procedure the ordered vehicle has precedence over potential vehicles, the scheduled delivery date provided to the customer might be the earliest in the production plant but not be a production slot before the delivery date desired by the customer.
Even when a the production slot for the vehicle can be secured, if the parts configuring the vehicle can not be procured by the secured date of the production slot, it is necessary to secure a production slot for the vehicle having a later operation day so as to comply with the operation slot of the parts. While the problem of parts shortage can be solved by maintaining a large inventory of parts, such a solution is not realistic.
The present invention was achieved to solve the problems described above. It is an object of the invention to provide an ordered product delivery date management system which enables delivery of a product on an exact delivery date desired by a user.
To achieve the aforesaid object, the ordered product delivery date management system of the invention is an ordered product delivery date management system which allocates production slots for the products producible in every operation day, allocates a production slot to an ordered product designated in received order information, and determines an operation day of the allocated production slot as a deliverable date, and which comprises a production slot database which stores assignment states of respective production slots; and a production management processing means which secures a production slot for the ordered product according to the desired delivery date designated in the order information based on the contents of the production slot database and stores identification information of the secured ordered product and the desired delivery date in correspondence with identification information of the secured production slot; wherein when no unassignment production slot is allocated is available prior to the desired delivery date designated in the order information, and, when a production slot is already secured up to the designated desired delivery date, an operation day of the secured production slot is earlier than the desired delivery date of the ordered product and there is an ordered product for which a production slot is newly securable before or on the same date of the desired delivery date of the ordered product, the production management processing means performs management of exchange for a production slot of a product to allocate the production slot secured for the product to the ordered product designated in the order information.
According to the present invention, the ordered product, for which the production slot is secured by performing the management of exchange of the production slot of the product, can be delivered by the desired delivery date, and the delivery of the other ordered product, which had its production slot exchanged for the former product, can also be delivered by its desired delivery date. Thus, a plurality of customers can be satisfied.
The ordered product delivery date management system also comprises a parts production slot database which stores assignment states of the production slot for each part wherein production slots for each part producible in an operation day are allocated for the respective parts; a parts information master database which stores the ordered product produced using the pertinent parts in correspondence with the respective parts; and an ordered product specifications information database which stores information concerning part required for producing the ordered product in correspondence with identification information of the ordered product; wherein, when the production slot for producing the ordered product can be secured before the desired delivery date designated in the order information but there is a part among the parts required for producing the ordered product for which a production slot cannot be secured to enable the delivery by the desired delivery date of the ordered product, the production management processing means performs the management of exchange of a production slot of a part so as to allocate a production slot of the part based on the contents of the parts production slot database.
Even when a conventional Art cannot deliver the product by the desired delivery date because production slots of the parts for the ordered product cannot be secured, the present invention can secure the ordered product and the production slots for all the parts used to produce the ordered product by. performing the management of exchange of the production slot of the pertinent part for which the production slot could not be secured. Accordingly, the ordered product can be delivered by the desired delivery date.
Where there is no free production slot before the desired delivery date designated in the order information, the production management processing means exchanges a production slot prior to the designated desired delivery date secured for a product having lower priority than the ordered product to use it for the ordered product.
According to the present invention, the production slot secured for the product having lower priority than the ordered product is exchanged for the ordered product. Therefore, a production ratio of the ordered products occupying the production slots can be improved.
Where there are a plurality of products for which exchangeable production slots are secured for the ordered product designated in the order information, the production management processing means sends information concerning the products for which exchangeable production slots are secured to an order information sending side so as to enable the selection of a product to be exchanged.
According to the present invention, the exchangeable products are transmitted to the order information sending side so as to enable the selection of the product to be exchanged. Therefore, the order information sending side can exchange slots for products which seem to be optimum.